Update to my dear friend Pat
who has a signature
at the bottom of her emails
~ Pat
Getting old is a
thrill a minute!
by Craig Kirchner
I’m sitting
waiting to see my dermatologist.
I’m three weeks
removed from Mohs
and nine stitches
on my Frankenstein temple,
and now need a
small thing looks
like a tiny
pinecone zapped.
My forehead
hairline is a desert that will
now have a frozen
oasis. I’m told everyone
in Florida has
skin cancer—get over it.
Rolling my tongue,
like a snake
curling through smooth rocks,
over crowns on
three molars,
all capped in the
last 9 months.
My teeth are
crumbling like my joints.
Gel shots in both
knees
as soon as this
skin thing is over,
should keep me
walking until Christmas.
I do Wordle and
Soduko every morning,
not to be
competitive with Dee,
or for the
acceleration of getting, it in two,
but as a gauge, an
alarm, I hope will go off,
will register,
wake me to coming dementia,
when I can’t
properly place vowels,
the numbers, and
then the words
like I’m
attempting to put together now.
Craig Kirchner
thinks of poetry as hobo art, loves storytelling and
the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart,
and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After
a writing hiatus he was recently published in Decadent
Review, Wild Violet, Last
Leaves, Literary Heist, Ariel Chart, Cape Magazine, Flora
Fiction, Young Ravens, Chiron Review, Yellow Mama, Valiant Scribe and
several dozen other journals.
